Almost dead

    A bloody hand found its way inside the cave. Then another and suddenly the while body was easy to see against the weak light of the Moon outside. It was a man and he was barely standing up, visibly shaking, grabbing the rock walls of the cave with every single step he took.  He collapsed as his hand slipped from the wall and his whole body was unable to remain up. He hit the ground with a very loud noise but even that was not enough to be heard over the amount of water that was falling outside.

 The next morning, the man woke up exactly were he had passed out the day before. He first opened his eyes and didn’t move, partially incapable of doing that but also not wanting to risk causing more damage to his very sensitive body. But then he realized, as he moved his hands and fingers, that he was laying on a pool of dark blood. He stood himself up with the help of his hands and a while later he was sitting against the rock wall.

 The pool of blood was almost completely dried and it looked like something out of the ordinary. Especially because, when he touched his stained close, he didn’t feel anything in particular. He hope to know where the bullet holes where, as he remembered what had happened the day before but there was no trace of any of that in his body. He opened his shirt and touched his skin and realized there was nothing in particular happening there.

 The man took a deep breath and looked outside: it was not raining but the weather had not improved that much. It was still very gray and he knew that people would be looking out for him and he definitely didn’t want to be found. He decided to stay in the cave at least another hole day. Maybe that way he would be able to understand what was happening to him. Because he was sure he had been shot several times in the chest and in the back. And now he had no proof of that, no matter how vivid everything was in his mind.

 For water, he decided to crawl to the entrance and drink the droplets that fell from the sky. When the rain picked up, he was able to drink some more and also wash his clothes in the outside, without risking anyone seeing her. He took off his clothes and tried to wash them as well as he could. After that, he just sat inside the cave, his clothes on rocks drying.

 He began thinking about the people that had tried to kill them. They were very vicious and dangerous but not very smart. The cave was not that far from town and anyone would have been there first when it was public he had escaped his death under the hands of real criminals, much worse than he had ever be.

He had actually been a criminal. Nothing too lethal: only robbing stuff and, at most, dealing sometimes with drugs when the times needed it. He knew he wasn’t the cleanest person in the face of the Earth but the only time he had decided to stop his secret dealing, then that day he’s attacked by his enemies who try to kill him but weren’t able to do it.

 And there was that now. He had always noticed, from a younger age, that he never really had problems with scarring or health in general. He had never had the flu after he turned twelve and every time he cut his skin by accident, it cured rather fast. He always thought it was because he ate very well or something like that but apparently there was something really different going on around him. How was it possibly that he survived so many shots? They had him really close, it wasn’t like the bullets missing him by seconds or anything.

 The second day inside the cave, he actually found two of the bullets on the cave’s floor. He wasn’t sure if those too were the ones that had been inside his body but he really couldn’t find another explanation for it. On his skin, he had no scars or markings that showed that he had been the victim of such a brutal attack. He even considered the possibility that he might be going insane. But after thinking it through once and again, he reached to the conclusion that he was as sane as can be.

 By the third day there, he was very hungry. He hadn’t eaten anything decent for a while and he had to go out at night in order to wander around and check if there was something he could eat around there. He was fortunate enough to find a gas station with the corresponding market. The young man that worked there looked at the man in a very suspicious way: the short was still stained with blood and his hair and skin did not look particularly clean. 

 He wandered around the store, grabbing things and also asking himself how the hell he was going to pay for all of that. He decided to be a robber once again because he was hungry. He would have to knock the kid out and just leave as fast as he could. But first, he filled his basket with thing to eat and to drink. There were even freshly cooked hotdogs and he grabbed a couple to eat on the spot.

 The kid in charge did not ask what he wanted as a woman with a pantyhose in her head entered the market right then. She had a gun on her hand and demanded the young man to put every single bill and coin from the register into one of plastic bags he had for anything that people might buy. She did not see the man from the cave, which had been very focused serving all the toppings on one his hotdogs.

 He looked at her fast but had no idea who she was. As the kid opened the register, the man realized he couldn’t let that happen. Something in his mind was opposed to the idea that the place that he was about to rob was going to robbed first by someone else. Granted, he didn’t want any of the money and just all of the food, but it just seemed like that wasn’t something that should be allowed. He looked at her carefully again and, without thinking it through, he launched himself at her, knocking him down.

 She fell to the ground all right but was still holding the gun. She shot twice, the bullets whistling very near the young man’s head. The man tried to submit her but she wouldn’t let herself be dominated. She was very strong and just had a lot of energy that the man form the cave had not. He had barely recovered from all that had happened to him but he still could hold for a bit longer.

 It was then she released herself from his hands and pointed the gun at him. She was about to talk but he moved so she shot twice. The kid squealed behind the counter when he heard the sounds. He was shaking a lot and couldn’t believe this was only his second week on the job. However, he was more surprised when he heard more fighting sounds and moaning and then nothing more.  He was very nervous but everything had apparently ended that night. Thinking of calling the police, he stood up shaking a lot and looked over the counter.

 On the floor, the woman was unconscious, with a big red mark on her head. The man that had come to buy food was beside her, with a can of chili that had been resting in the aisle behind him. He was bleeding from the chest and the young man was about to grab the phone to call the police but then he saw something very difficult to believe: from the guy’s chest, two metallic bullets were coming out as if they were giant pimples. They fell to the ground and then the guy coughed.

 He opened his eyes and looked at the kid, who looked back. Then, shaking too, the man stood up and asked the kid if he could take some of the food for free as he had no money to pay. The young man, surprisingly enough, moved his head affirmatively. The man from the cave then grabbed the basket he had been filling with one hand and the hotdog that was still in the toppings counter with the other.

 Just as he was about to leave, the kid asked him who he was. The man stopped short at the door but didn’t turn around. His answer wasn’t instantaneous, as he needed to think it through before opening his mouth. However, he turned his head around and said “Mr. Dead, kid. That’s me”. Then, he left for his cave. The excitement was so much for the kid, that he fainted. 

Paradise is not safe

   The sandstorm was slowly subsiding. For a couple of hours, every grain of sand in the desert had been lifted and sent several kilometers further from where it had been for months. Storms were not uncommon as the desert had them very often, especially in the summer month when the weather there got even worse.  It was a dangerous and unforgiving place, but it could also be beautiful and peaceful.

 There was a small oasis, containing a rather large pond, which had resisted to the wind and the forces of nature. To any traveller, it surely seemed like an illusion because it wasn’t very common to see all that water in the middle of the desert. A flock of orange birds arrived just as the sand settled, sitting on the palm trees and, from time to time, flying low over the pond to get their feathers wet in order to clean them.

 It was a small paradise. Some hours later, another creature came close to the oasis. It was a human and it was wearing a full mask over the face but, whoever it was, also had uncovered arms and tight pants that were smeared with mud and sand dust. The human was riding a camel, which was barely walking. As resistant as they were, it was clear this one had gone through a lot and really needed to get rest. Just a few meters away from reaching the pond, the came collapsed and the human hit the ground hard.

 For a long time, maybe a couple of hours, the person stayed there, with the face on the sand and the legs crossed in a very weird angle. The camel had stopped breathing the moment it collapsed. Whoever that person was, there was no ride that could take him or her back to civilization. Now, the desert had become even larger with the death of the camel. But nature and the orange birds ignored this. To them, it was all the same.

 When the human woke up, it ran to the water, fast, as if something was very wrong. It moved a lot in the water. Apparently, removing the mask was much harder that envisioned. After a few minutes of struggle, a shorthaired woman came out of the water and sat on the edge of the pond. She had to cut through the mask with her nails and she had hurt herself a bit by doing so as the material had become difficult to breath in because of the sand.

 She looked around, watching the orange birds and her dead ride, as well as some small twister far in the distance. The storm had not entirely died out. But that wasn’t really the problem. The real problem was being in the middle of nowhere with no way to survive. She looked at her reflection on the water and saw the small cuts she had given herself with her fingernails. She also realized how tired she looked and how her arms were burned by the very hot desert sun.

 Unwilling to stay put, she decided to dig with her own hands a grave for the camel. It was not only out of respect, but also because she didn’t want certain animals to come there looking for a meal. Burying her camel was hard, as it had been a gift from a person that had saved her some days ago and now that gift had left her stranded in the middle of nowhere. She actually had no idea who that person was because, as she was, the person also had a covered face. But the woman felt it had been another female prisoner back in that place.

 All kinds of memories were rushing back to her head and dug the grave: she had been a long time on a prison right there in the desert. It was run by legionnaires, men that were dedicated to the preservation of those colonies, places where they had no place to be in but there they were. Besides, she knew they hated woman because female prisoners always had worse punishments if they did something wrong. For stealing a loaf of bread for example, a woman would be flogged in the yard twenty times. A man would only get one punch in the stomach and that was it.

 But one night, something had happened. Apparently the prison had been attacked by desert dwellers and it the chaos, the woman that had given her the camel had appeared and liberated her from her chains. She helped her getting some clothes too and the mask in order to survive the harsh conditions of the desert.

 The shorthaired woman dragged the camel centimeter by centimeter, being a very heavy creature. She knew it was a waste to bury it and not eat it but she had no knife or a way to make fire. She couldn’t keep the creature’s milk and grease anywhere so there was no point in letting the camel there for the scavengers to eat. It took her several hours to get the animal in the hole she had done and some more time putting sand all over it. Finally, she rested on top of the mound she had created, shocked by the fact that she was hopeless.

 She really tried to remember her name, something that was so essential and obvious but she had no idea what it was. She had no idea either of how she had arrived to that prison. It was possible that the woman had been a thief or some sort of criminal but she really had no recollection of anything before the prison. The only image she had very clear on her mind was the one of the whole compound burning as the night became darker and she rode of on the camel. For a moment, she had wanted to go back and pick up the person that had saved her but, whoever it was, had disappeared in a matter of seconds. She wanted to thank that person, do it with her voice because she hadn’t spoken a word. But it was too late.

 Looking at the water again, she decided to take off her clothes and have another swim, this time to really clean herself up and feel like a human being again. Not that she remembered how to feel like one, but maybe she could have a revelation while in the middle of the pond. She left the tight and brown clothes near the camel mound to dry and then walked the few steps that separated her from the water. As her feet got wet again, she felt better than in any other moment in the past few months. When her whole body was in, she felt new.

 The woman sunk her head in the water and stayed there for a few seconds, realizing how great it felt to have the sun on her skin and her body all wet at the same time. She felt like a person, very different from what she had felt like in prison. She tried not to think about that, not to remember the atrocities she had lived through but it was impossible. It was the only life that she knew: the mistreatment, the dark cells, the lack of food and water, the laughs of the guards and the feeling that she was never going to see anything else than that awful place.

 A howl was heard on the wind. All thought of the prison vanished. She stood still in the water, waiting to confirm if what she had heard was real or if she had imagined it. No, there it was again. She got out of the water fast and realized it would take a while to get dry. Besides, she had no ride so she couldn’t go far. Another howl made her desperate, looking all over the place for an answer that didn’t seem to be coming fast enough. What should she do?

 The howling creature was a man, the leader of the guards in the prison. He rode a stallion, as well as the two other men that came with him. He arrived at the oasis at very high speed, which scared the orange birds from the palm trees. The three men descended from their horses and let them have a drink of water as they had a drink from the bottle they had on their waist. They also had a gun each on their belts and one of them used it to shoot a bird that had not flown. The little body dropped into the water, almost silently.

 The three men walked around the oasis and took random shots at the ground and the water. Then, their leader howled again, as they came full circle around the pond and reached their horses again. They left in a huff, the orange birds arriving shortly after.

 It was then when the woman stood up from the sand, having been breathing through a small whole which the men had ignored. They were obviously looking for escaped prisoners, which meant she wasn’t far enough from them. She unearthed her clothes from the ground, put them on and started walking. Maybe she had no chance but she couldn’t stare there forever. Paradise was not safe.

A Woman

   She knew she looked good. Better than that. She looked perfect, sexy and very attractive in any way possible. She had tried several bikinis earlier to know which one would make her look better in that deck chair she was going to be laying in. She finally went with one with lots of colors that looked kind of small on hair. It was just an optical illusion but it worked just as she had hoped. When she descended to the swimming pool area, at least five men turned their heads towards her. That was the proof she needed.

 She chose a deck chair in the middle of the area and just took off her sandals and purse and lay there for a few minutes. Then, trying to seem distracted or simply too sexy to care, she grabbed her purse and took out a small yellow bottle. She applied that sunscreen all over her body, slowly and touching very single centimeter she could reach. She was sure that man men were looking at her doing what she was doing and she tried not to think of them.

 When she finished, after what appeared to be an eternity, she put the bottle away. However, she grabbed another one from the purse, a brown one that was a special oily solution to get tanned faster. She sprayed it all over and spent even more time with it. She couldn’t really look at all the guy watching her but she knew they were there, almost salivating at the though of her just being there. When she was done, she lay done in a perfect pose and just tried to enjoy the sun.

 Minutes later, a waiter from the bar came to her and told her someone had sent her a drink. She covered her eyes and asked who had sent what. The waiter pointed to a man in the bar area, not far from there. He was very hairy and had only his trunks on. He wasn’t very handsome but he wasn’t an ugly man either. But the thing was, it wasn’t the one she was hoping for. Anyway, she accepted the drink and waived at the man.

 The drink was really delicious, filled with fruit juice and little alcohol. She drank almost half of it because of the sun but then she saw someone else coming her way, and it wasn’t a waiter. It was a very tall individual. He was visibly not from around there, very tall and with a well taken care of body. He was very sexy. But he wasn’t the guy she was hoping for. Not him or the guy in the bar.

 When he got to her, the tall guy complimented her and asked her if she could be invited to a drink and she said that it could happen but that she wasn’t interested in knowing anyone at the moment. The man felt visibly sad when she said that but he ordered another drink for her anyway. It was a piña colada, which she enjoyed a lot. And she enjoyed even more when he walked away, a bit annoyed.

 Apparently her work at the pool wasn’t good enough for the man she wanted. She knew his room had a view towards the pool area and she also knew that he had spent the last few days in that same place, swimming a bit or drinking with some of his buddies. She needed him to look at her for a while and then she would have him under him spell or at least that was the idea.  She decided to sit down on her chair and only cover her face with the hat she had brought from her room.

 Her legs were positioned in such a way; she knew it was too irresistible not to, at least, say something. She had very long logs and very beautiful hair that she had dyed blonde just before arriving at the hotel. She had to do it several times until she was satisfied with the results. She wanted to look as sexy as she could and attention would be guaranteed if she looked different from what men would expect.

 So her skin was pretty tanned but she had a long head of blonde hair arranged in a straight ponytail. She had tried several ways to put her hair and she had decided on the ponytail because it was simply and it had worked for her many times before. She needed to lure that guy into the people, into her hands, and the only way to do it was to use every single asset she had on her body.

 She worked out daily. Sometimes it was running and some other it was lifting light weights and dancing and using all the machines in the gym she went too. She was very dedicated and could focus on her body every single moment she was in there and it showed. No one told her what to do or how to do it, she had learned how to do a good routine by doing stuff every single day since had been the current person she was.

 Taken care of herself was also very interesting. She got to do a series of diets and it was interesting how many things she didn’t know about eating properly or even about what things she could eat besides what she had eaten all of her life. Changing those habits was very important for the new her and she had to be very careful with the things she brought to eat and drink. She had forbid herself from drinking but she had ignored that rule in the pool because she needed to succeed.

 She changed the position of her legs and looked around. No sign of the man and she was getting inpatient. She grabbed her phone and browsed through the pictures there. She had one of the guys she wanted: it had been taken during breakfast the day before. He hadn’t even noticed her right then but it was only because she hadn’t tried her best to look great. But now, things were different. He couldn’t resist.

 When she heard a group of men laughing, she instantly moved her head towards them. They were two guys; two jocks typed playing cards in a table not very far. They were too young to be his buddies. She looked away exactly when she felt they were going to look at her. And when they did, it was almost as if she could feel her eyes on her bodies. It was quite uncomfortable but she just pretended not to have seen them. She had her sunglasses on and that could help her deflect some unwanted attention.

 But apparently, not well enough. One of the young men came towards her and just stood there like a lamp, blocking her sunlight. She knew she couldn’t ignore him so she faked a smile and asked him to move because of the sun. It was obvious he hadn’t even realized what he was doing. He jumped to the side as if he had being burned or something and kept smiling towards her.

 Finally, he told her she was a pretty lady that needed a man to take care of her. She only told him he was sweet but that she was a bit busy with her tanning right now. The jock appeared to understand that it was a very important thing, so he apologized and vowed to come back in a few moments when she would be less busy. He moved away still looking at her, almost tripping into the pool. She would have laughed but not in that moment.

 Because right then, she saw him. He was walking slowly by the other side of the pool. He wasn’t very tall and his skin was very white for a person that had been in that hotel for at least three days. His body wasn’t the best one on the area but that wasn’t what she was after. She regained her best pose and moved her legs and arms as naturally as she cool. Through her sunglasses, she saw him taking a chair across her.

 It was obvious he had noticed her. Their game lasted a few more minutes, with her doing all the poses she knew and him just trying not to look. But he finally did and realized they couldn’t avoid each other anymore. They couldn’t ignore what they knew. So he walked to the other side of the pool, close to her. And she sat down with her legs down in the deck chair, not trying to be sexy anymore.

 The man sat by her and told her the weather was nice. She moved her legs aside, putting them near his legs. She got a bit closer and said: “It could get nicer”. She also said something else to his ear, which made him smile. They both stood up and walked away together from the pool. She had achieved her goal. Agent 37 was closer than ever to her objective and nothing was going to stop her.

Teacher and student

   His breathing was paced, rhythmically following the movement of his body and his partner’s body too. John had always wanted this; he had had a crush for Dean since the first week of class. But it was only now, during the first break of spring that they had come into real contact with each other and everything had unfolded in a matter of days. Dean watched John in the dark and John felt Dean’s face, as they both exhaled and inhaled in almost the same way.

 They shared a kiss and continued, John having his hands on Dean’s chest, moving slowly. Dean grabbed John’s face with one of his hands and he realized he could cover almost the young man’s entire face with it. He didn’t try to do it because it would have been distracting, but he realized he had never been with a man he could do that too. John was, after all, one of his students in college. He had never really paid much attention to him until an incident occurred in recent days.

 John had been caught cheating on a test and Dean, who had gone through that before, told him he wouldn’t get the administrative offices know about the mishap if he repeated the test another day. John, of course, agreed. The day of the repeat test, Dean was prepared to wait for John to finish but summer had started and he noticed how nice John looked in shorts and in a tank top. He began a conversation with him right when the test happened and the next thing he knew, they were having some coffee not far from college.

 Suddenly, Dean moved a little and John made a grimace out of pain. Dean asked if that had hurt but John shook his head and launched himself at him, kissing Dean passionately as if they were about to be separated. Dean kissed the student but decided to change places. He wanted to be on top now. John understood at once and positioned himself like John wanted to. They continued like that, John grabbing Dean’s hands strongly and Dean kissing his neck as they had sex.

 It was not the first time for Dean, being with a student that is. He knew it was a mistake and that it was dangerous but, somehow, he had also being lured into it by that other guy. He had been a year older than John and had been a really bad student for almost all year and he practically offered himself to Dean in order to pass the class. It wasn’t ethical but he wasn’t able to resist.

 The first time they did it was right in his office, just five minutes away from any person with the power to expel the kid or send Dean to jail. But they did exactly that for several other times, until there wasn’t any need for it to continue. The kid moved on with better grades and Dean just stayed there.

 He had being in a relationship with other men his age too. But he could never really work it out with them. They always wanted so much more: someone with a better body, someone that felt younger, someone that could go with them to crazy adventures every once in a while. And although Dean played with risky things, he really didn’t like to go hiking or diving with sharks or anything like that. He was over forty but he hadn’t been through his mid-life crisis. He just wanted to share a moment with someone and just lived through that. He wasn’t interested in anything more.

 That’s why John was so perfect. He would come in his shorts and Converse shoes almost every weekend, to his house, and they would have sex for several hours. He had lost the ability to know if that was right or wrong. He always reminded himself of John’s age: 21. That wasn’t illegal and they couldn’t do anything with that argument. It’s not like he was a high school teacher. But, nevertheless, he knew he could have problems.

 John finished first but gave Dean some time to finish too. They kissed afterwards and rested for some minutes, before John put on his clothes and announced he had to leave because he had to go help his mother with some arrangement for a barbecue party they were going to have for the whole family. Dean thought that was very sweet but he didn’t say anything. He just gave John one last kiss at the door.

 As he showered, moments later, he realized that when John left, he had wanted to go after him or asked him to stay. It was the first time he felt that. He had never had that issue with the other boy. He had been such a business transaction, that even the sex was not even exciting or interesting. It had been just something to do, and that was it. No pleasure or interest in anything from any side.

 Dean massaged his skin with liquid body gel, John closed his eyes and decided to remember John’s body, centimeter by centimeter. He knew his legs perfectly, his buttocks, his back and his chest. He loved his lips and his hair, cut in the way many young kid cut their hair, shorter in the sides and longer in the middle. He liked that and had even thought about getting that in the barbershop but he realized he would look weird in class.

 After all, college began again in only a week and he had to go back to been, or at least pretending to be, a very old man. Every single student thought that just because he had some grey hairs and was over forty, he was automatically an old man. But he didn’t felt like one. Yet, no one wanted one of those teachers that looks older and behaves like a youngster. That’s simply wrong.

 He opened his eyes again; once he was done thinking about John and about every other sexual experience he had lived in recent years. They weren’t that many although he had tried several new things to bring some spice to his life. Dean had tried saunas and discos and sex clubs, all very fun but definitely not for him. In every single one of those places, he had felt he was an invisible person waiting for something impossible to happen. It was pathetic how, when younger men came in any of those places, every guy looked like a hungry tiger. It was pathetic.

 After opening the windows and pulling up the shades, Dean walked around his house naked, looking for his cellphone. The apartment was not very big, so he got really annoyed when something was missing. He finally saw it on the kitchen counter and remembered that the day had begun with him offering some dark chocolate to John. It had been something very cheesy to do, but he really thought the kid would enjoy it.

 Back in his bedroom, he checked his phone and thought about what was always in his mind: did John really liked him or was it just because he was his teacher or because he needed better grades or maybe even just because he was an older available guy? He always asked himself that and the answers that he came up with were always torture. It didn’t make any sense to be thinking about that. It was something that happened and that was it.

 Then, he heard a knock on the door. He put on some boxers to go an answer. As he went to open, he realized they had not been buzzed in. Behind the door were a man and a woman. The woman presented her badge: she was with the police. She told Dean he had to come with them to the police station. Dean tried to ask what it was all about but the woman insisted on him getting dressed and joining them fast.

 He did so and some minutes later he was been interrogated in a small room. Everything got to his brain in waved the size of a tsunami: apparently, John’s parents had hired a private detective to follow their son, as they realized he was never home. They were apparently a paranoid couple. The detective had taken several pictures of them going up to John’s apartment and they were even infrared pictures and audios.

 Dean reminded them that John was twenty-one. The two officers looked at each other and told him that wasn’t true. They had John’s birth certificate and it confirmed he was actually seventeen. He had finished high school with honors with a very young age and decided to enter college right away. After all, it was his first year.

 Dean realized John himself had lied to him. But why? What would he get from that? Was it because he was afraid? The police formally arrested John and, soon, he had no job to go back too. A horrible chapter of his life had just begun and all because of a seemingly innocent lie.